a rose to you and you and you
dear readers that stumbled onto this page
and familiar friends who’ve long remained
through drought or storm as balmy days
faithful ones who exchange the fruits
gleaned from weedy words and pruned vines
some tangy to the taste or sweetly spiced
all enlivened with the sunlit labor of moments
transcribed to screens of dispersed bytes
to be received like petals furled and unfurled
as if a rose is a rose is a rose is a rose
when given in love
Unspoken Stretches
The newly sprung Black-Eyed Susans, the weighty towers of St. Paul’s,
Touch the sky equally, centuried grandiose the one, the other idly,
Like the newborn in her pram reaching talcumed arms to a light blue
Or the redoubtable keen-eyed woman, confined within, searching clouds,
Hope-stretched each, bodies strung diversely, each her own,
Stalwart with suffering and age, supple green in yearning:
My God, not to touch the sky, but that You would touch our faces
And by that material touch, transfigure space and time to glory, joy unspeakable.
2 Corinthians 3:18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.
Revelation 22:20 He who testifies to these things says, “Surely I am coming soon.” Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!
“Take this down,” I said. Two shades sprang up, one more agile than the other, stood poised and ready.
I ran my fingers along a dusty mantel.
How to begin?
“To Whom It May Concern.” Friends.
I hesitated, unaccustomed to the sunlight streaming in through my two windows to the world at large.
“Now reblogged, then nominated, somehow . . . ” despite the shadows.
I squint into the sunny brightness, the dust motes like butterflies.
“. . . to both a due and hearty thanks . . . .” surely no more, no less rather than to carry on so til grace given is grace lost.
“That will do.”
The shades sprang down from their high perches, still gaping, and light stood like pillars under their cargo.
Even so back to books and lamplight, and Thou, my guardian.
There’s no news but breeds new fears
In the flickering light as dusk falls
In the last cry of a distant bird
In the misshapen shadows of the unseen
Within cloistered walls.
Bated breath and heaving sighs
The chill alarm of a sickness bred
In a distant lab, a plague let loose
Not of locusts or frogs but airborne
Contagion, the ghost of times gone.
In the night an insistent distress
A job lost, and mouths to feed,
A waiting game for a government check
One nightmare subsides only to waken
Another in the fell dark.
A manic wind pulls the screen door free
What have we let in, what have we to do;
Across the street, above the lampposts
A twinkling starry host and the watchful moon
Shine their peace.
So happy to share with you another short story from Wallie’s Wentletrap, this time published in the current Summer 2017 issue of The Sonder Review. The story “Technitos,” can also viewed here, and will particularly interest those with a bent for science fiction (androids, techs, & such) but is finally a deeply moving tale about, as the editors of the SR put it, just what it means to be human. So take a look & see if it isn’t worth your time!
It’s a rickety, rollicking ride I’m on
Reading Uncle’s “Our Mutual Friend”
On the tide of the Thames as it rolls
Along, dragging me in its mysterious wake
With Veneerings and Rimtys and inspectors
That lurk behind the John Harmons
Who could be the Srivatis and Vikrams
And Chandras hawking rumors by the Ganges
In the myriad scenario of humanity’s flow
Under the pen of a master storyteller caught
In the blood-spun net of familiar lives
Spent on the banks of labyrinthian rivers
That wend to shores around the world
And stay to balance on my fingertips.
If an author needs a reader
To see with different eyes
The words that she has written
Which once were on her heart,
The reader needs the author
To show her other worlds
That only words can offer
As a bridge to different hearts.
Still better is the Author
Who became the Word in flesh
And walked among the suffering,
Our griefs upon His heart,
Who with divine compassion
Bore our sins upon His cross
Then wrote in broken hearts
His unending song of Love.
December came with grim aplomb, and I in hiding
From screaming carts down shopping aisles, the alarming
Wreaths with fragrant graveside cheer, and Marley unchained,
Playing false, outdone by someone else’s fireside hearth
And ham and pudding and drinks strung out like cards
Upon a fraying thread and skewers of mercilessly toasted goodwill.
Across snowy hills
A blackbird flies before dawn
The lone sleeper wakes
I like the climate of your mind
Where in refuge I linger while
All round the stormy winds may rage
Like beasts distraught and wild.
Within the sphere of your regard
I stay to feast on temperate calm
As breezes blow that only serve
To sweeten sunlit climes.
Here tangled thoughts lose their knots,
Unsort their tattered ends to find
Like scattered streams that crooked ran
Now meet their just repose.
On airy mounts of deep delight
Knowledge dwells in humble cheer
As freely light the dark dispels to show
The ground whereon we tread.
I like the climate of your mind, my dear,
Enthralled I’ve lingered long
As in God’s grace your graces grow,
The more you I grow to love.
Already Christmas lights are blurring in the afterglow
of gifts spilled in haste on to waiting hands below
the ribboned paper and dainty bows caparisoned
like a king’s treasure to tease even from cynics a frisson
of desire.
Continue reading “I Have To Say . . . (or my Wednesday One-Liner)”
Sometimes when you “express yourself,” you’re just exorcising the zombie you’ve become – or attempting to. It’s a rare moment of self-awareness when you want to break free of the accumulated dead cells of all that stifles life. Writing is one way for me, especially if it begins and ends with a deeper awareness not just of myself but also of my Maker and my God! The following verse was written in a burst of frustration as thoughts began intruding into my quiet time:
He sat on his front porch, listening:
behind him, the sounds of Corigliano
spun slowly out into the road before him –
Fantasia on an Ostinato – spinning round him
with the centrifugal trauma of gathering desire
inevitably aborted, the weight of a shudder
passing through him like the blunt edge
of a Mamet play: he gripped his arms
to steady himself against the onslaught
of thoughts and impressions, and, yes, wishes
that fled as fast as they appeared, ghostly archipelagos
rolling like gravel out the leaky corners of his eyes.
I want to start my journey here, while the tide is in, where
the sun’s light glances off the crest of little waves
so that a thousand little lights sparkle
like stars just off the surface where the winds swirl
and I wonder as I gasp at the beauty given to me, Why am I?
Why are you? Why do we breathe in and out in these shells
of our being looking out through blue, green, brown, black,
grey eyes to find stars afloat on spindling breezes
and babies in our arms and lovers to melt into?
Was it for this moment? Or that: when flesh tore or the heart
burst like an open wound and no one knew but you
where the blood was spilt and how it continues to run?
Why this consciousness of jumbled desires and conflicting needs
treading time past, present, and future like a traveller
with a destination, a place to get to from God-knows-where?
“Where are you going, and where do you come from?”
The grave. The womb. The zygote and the worm. Understand?
Now ask me the real question that burns at the root and spit
of me: Why am I? This me that recognizes me like a stranger
in a mirror. Was I really a twinkle in an astrologer’s eye that fell out
by the force of gravity in a mother’s bed-time tale?
But when I look at the stars on the lake and in the night sky,
I don’t think of meiosis and compost, just eternity
as if I were born with it like a note left on a child
swaddled on the doorstep of life here and now, but a note all the same,
written by an infinite Being who alone had the power to birth my being,
to delight or grieve over me, to find and save me, to give me life,
to know Him through sparkling stars and bursting hearts
and love that never ends.
poem and audio reading of “Why Am I?” ℗©2020 Dora A.K
Ecclesiates 3: 11: He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also, he has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.
“How did it happen?
Why, where, and when?
What was the weapon?
And who did it, Sven?”
The challenge: 190-210 word limit; character: spy; incorporate assigned picture.
Out from her apartment eyrie
she looked to see the stillness of the frozen lake
glisten like a painted screen through the morning fog,
laser etchings of budding trees
in solid ice, delicately veined branches
yielding bonsai blooms of frost
like the crystal beauty of a cracked vase
or a broken heart.
Ah, Lord Jesus, Author and Word,
Speak into me Your eternal Light that I may see light,
May see You and seeing, be enthralled by Your gaze
Of love unbounded from eternity,
Yet stretched upon a tree by my crimes,
Then laid in a tomb in death’s cold embrace
Till it cracked and crumbled to contain
One by whom and through whom and for whom
All life sprang into being.
Ah, Lord Jesus, speak daily Your word of life into me:
Lest I be entombed once more by self,
Break through the self-drawn darkness of each day
And turn upon me the light of Your countenance
That I may live as You have willed, abundantly.
For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.” (Psalm 63:9)
“I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)
You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. (Psalm 16:11)
The ashram still had its Beatles graffiti. A shrine now. No incense burned beneath it but they grilled and gated it behind an iron fence and placed a straw basket beside a watchful cross-legged yogi whose piercing gaze was enough to disgorge a “donation” from the harassed tourists taking selfies.
Continue reading “Only a Christian Writer Can Write True Horror”
